Page 5 of Reclaimed Dreams

Near tears, Jo opened the dresser drawer to find it empty. Shit. The bad news was all of the baby’s clothes were either dirty or on the couch. The good news was so were Jo’s clean shirts.

She carried Sofia at arms length into the living room and stripped her down over the hardwood floor before whipping her own shirt off as well, tossing all of the wet clothes into the dirty basket on the floor. She’d just gotten the baby clothed again and situated in her bouncy chair when the front door slapped open.

Jo screamed and covered her bare chest, startling the baby back into crying.

“Jo? Jo!” Dom didn’t even seem to notice that she was half naked as he ran to her and spun her around in a circle.

A few years ago, seeing her topless would have stopped him in his tracks. My, how times had changed. Would her body ever start to feel like her own again?

“Babe, you’ll never guess what happened today!”

“It’s three thirty in the afternoon. Is everything okay?”

Dom barked out a laugh and kept dancing her around in a raucous circle she was sure the neighbors downstairs were loving. Gabe toddled out of the nursery, rubbing his eyes, and Dom released her and scooped him up into the dance. Jo tugged on an inside-out T-shirt and picked up Sofia to soothe her.

“John wants to retire!”

Jo’s heart fell into the pit of her stomach. John ran the construction company Dom and Tony worked for. If he was retiring and shutting down the business, they’d lose everything.

“Oh my God! Dom, what are we going to do? That’s our only income.”

Dom cut her off with a kiss. “He wants to sell the business to me and Tony!”

“Oh! That’s…can we afford that?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ll figure it out, but this puts us years ahead of our goal with established customers and bids in the queue. Babe, this is the break we needed!”

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